Interior Sec. Jewell: U.S. can pump oil and fight climate change

The question U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell faced Thursday night cut right to the heart of America’s energy debate.

U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell

Speaking at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Jewell had just given a vivid description of the toll that global warming is already starting to take on the environment. And yet her department leases public land to oil and gas companies to produce the fossil fuels that cause climate change.

“Can the administration be a real, serious climate leader and also promote more coal extraction, more oil drilling?” he asked Jewell. “At some point, isn’t there an either/or situation? Can it have it both ways?”

Jewell, a former oil-field engineer who later became CEO of the REI outdoor retail chain, didn’t flinch.

“We can’t switch from a fossil-fuel based economy to a renewable energy economy overnight,” Jewell told the crowd packed into the club’s meeting hall. “So yes, we’re going to still continue to develop those resources, but we’re also going to stand up renewable resources. And we have to do both if we’re going to have an economy, if we’re going to continue to grow and develop as a country. It’s important that we do both.”

It was as succinct a statement of Pres. Obama’s approach to energy and climate as you’ll hear. It came in the midst of a far-ranging discussion that managed to touch upon water, wildfires, wolves, dogs, national parks, large solar facilities in the southern California desert — even Twinkies.

Jewell defended hydraulic fracturing, the controversial oil and gas production technique, saying it could be done safely with the right regulations.

“How many people in the room here have fracked a well before?” she asked, raising her hand. “One? One besides me. Fracking has been around for decades, and there’s a tremendous amount of misinformation out there about it, a lot of fear that I think is unfounded.”

The Interior Department is in the midst of finalizing regulations for fracking on public lands. Jewell, who took office this spring, said the last draft of the regulations received 1.3 million comments from the public.

“We want to make sure that on public lands, we have very good baseline regulations that the public can feel good about,” she said.

Jewell drew a murmur of disbelief from the crowd, however, when she told Dalton that she wasn’t familiar with the “Halliburton loophole,” a provision of the U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005 that exempts fracking companies from being required to disclose the chemicals they inject underground.

Dalton also asked for Jewell’s take on the Keystone XL pipeline extension that would connect Canada’s oil sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast. The project is still being reviewed by the State Department, because it would cross a national border. For many environmentalists, the hotly contested project has become a test of Pres. Obama’s commitment to fighting climate change.

“If the president called you and said, ‘Sally, what should I do about Keystone XL,’ what would you say?” Dalton asked.

“I’d say, ‘You should call John Kerry,’ because it’s an international issue,” Jewell said with a smile.